jsackmann wrote:

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>One thing I would be very interested in, Jeff, is if you plan to unveil the "score" your algorithm gave each player

I might. The algorithm ended up getting very complicated, so while I could give some idea of where the big or small gaps are, as you say, the actual numbers are meaningless--abstractions of abstractions. Not sure how much of a negative that is.

>Using your ELO rating is it possible to rate the strength of a tournament

This is a surprisingly difficult problem. I do have a system for rating the 'path' that a player took to win a tournament, that is, the players that he beat. (I introduced it here: www.economist.com/game-theory/2017/09/13/sorry-roger-rafael-nadal-is-not-just-the-king-of-clay )

For rating draws in general: you could take the average of all the players in the draw, but that means you give a wild card (who will probably lose in the first round and be irrelevant to the end result) the same weight as the top seed. That doesn't seem right. You could weight the players by the number of rounds they are likely to play, or their chances of winning the tournament. That probably gets you closer.

But the real kicker is, the strength of a draw depends on which player's perspective you view it from. Take Tel Aviv last week -- Djokovic was there, and he was the only top-tenner. If you view it from Djokovic's perspective, it was an easy draw, one of the easiest he's entered in years. From the perspective of Cilic (or anyone else, really), it was not an easy draw, because Djokovic was there!

So it all depends on what type of question you're trying to answer.

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 Mmm. What triggered it was reading my favourite tennis book a while back, Open Tennis by Richard Evans which charts the early years of the Atp and WCT etc in the 70s and 80s. He talks about the WCT event in Bologna , Italy, in around 1970 and he wrote that it was possibly the best tournament of all time - all the top players of the time in a 32 draw and the quality of tennis was also stunning . I guess the output part of that, brilliant tennis, is impossible to measure and is in the eye of the beholder , but the input part - the overall best quality entry - I thought might be get attable? 

maybe a simpler question would be , based on ELO scores, what is the best quality match ever played in terms of the standard of the two players going into a match . And did it live up to expectations! It may well not be a slam final but a tour final (inevitably for the top 2 players at any one time to meet, it most surely would be a final) but perhaps not at slam level. 

JonH comes home wrote:

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Now - amazingly- I had Maria Sharapova as 36th in my list as well so bullseye! Our algorithms are perfectly aligned!

Need to read the article now.

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 I had Sharapova higher at 24.

Blue_Belle wrote:

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JonH comes home wrote:

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JonH comes home wrote:

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36th is Maria Sharapova

www.tennisabstract.com/blog/2022/10/06/the-tennis-128-no-36-maria-sharapova/

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 What struck me about Sharapova was that she maybe could have achieved so much more in terms of titles. She is only 35 now and could so easily of played longer and better for longer periods. undoubtedly a great player but maybe could have been even more ? 

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 Could she really have though? She had multiple issues with her shoulder over several years. I think she only really came back after the drugs ban to prove she could, without that ban, she might have retired earlier.

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 Possibly and I dont follow womens tennis closely enough to really know. What I do wonder re the drugs ban, was she just the unlucky one. It seemed quite borderline and innocuous and we all hear the rumours re other players, women and men. The obvious names. 

I had forgotten about the shoulder injurys of course. But she did seem unfulfilled compared to what

many might have expected. 

christ wrote:

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... or what if they had enforced rules against ridiculous shrieking during the point?

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 Then Seles and Azarenka would never have had a career either

indiana wrote:

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I suggest reading the written verdict and/or comments back at the time re any thoughts that Sharapova's meldonium use was innocuous

The hiding of her taking of it over a prolonged period, even from those close to her, was revealing and possibly part of the reason she wasn't alerted to stop using it when the rule changed. Anyway, sorry, we probably don't really want to be discussing this at length here.

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 I think it is valid to raise as it in turn raises the question as to whether her being ranked 36th in these types of rankings is compromised by the drug situation. Of course, we dont know who else has taken them and not been caught (Agassi was caught later in life for crystal meth of course) and rumours abound. I dont know how much the meldonium benefitted Sharapova in terms of achievements and Unlike other sports, tennis doesnt strip players of their records retrospectively.